Day Dreaming

What shape is your imagination in?

You’re in the third grade and you stare out the window at the empty playground, paved with blacktop. You can see the slide and the swings, motionless, and as if math weren’t boring enough, the playground just looks dead.

As you descend into a reality, the one you have chosen to create, the playground fades as the reality of your being in the Indianapolis 500 fades in and you see asphalt, the cars in front of you and beside you. You can smell gasoline and it’s all under a blue sky with white puffy clouds, the accelerator under your foot and hands on the wheel, as you pass a car. Strapped in tightly, you feel the helmet on your head and hear the engines roaring, yours, the loudest.

“Chuck!”

Jarred back into her reality, I see my teacher standing in front of me.

“You’re daydreaming when you need to pay attention to the multiplication problems we’re doing,” she said.

Students laugh at me.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answer and turn my attention to the board at the front of the room.

One more step of having an “imagination-ectomy” and your natural creativity takes a hit. Does it? Maybe.

Socially unacceptable, it is, to daydream. We’re taught to not do that. Some of us learn and some do not.

What if you exercised your imagination and took yourself to times and places you’ve visited? What if you found a photo of a place you wish to visit in person, and imagine being there?

You can come up with your own creations and scenarios. Give yourself permission to fantasize. Try it once a day. Enjoy the journey into creativity.